Most Helpful Customer Reviews

Halloween. What a perfect title for a Horror movie. It's hard to believe back in 1977 that there had never been any movie, let alone a Horror film, that incorporated that title. And what good usage it got. Written, directed, and even musically scored by John Carpenter (with great assistance by then girlfriend Debra Hill), this was truly a film that brought Horror to it's roots, leaving an impact that only George Romero's Night Of The Living Dead did ten years earlier. Showcasing a deranged killer by the name of Michael Myers who in childhood murdered his sister in cold blood on Halloween night, only to escape his asylum to return to his Illinois home to hunt down babysitter (and eventually known little sister) Jamie Lee Curtis 15 years later, was truly an amazing film that never exploited the genre, keeping the imagination and terror flowing within the viewers mind rather than blatantly on the screen. For it's time it was the number one profitable independent film ever made, and after almost thirty years, it still terrifies and never grows old. A true classic film. Every single DVD collector should own it....

But which one?

Not in the sense of sequels, but rather in which version of the original should you add to your collection. You see, this film has had the DVD distribution rights by Anchor Bay Entertainment (now known as Starz), and they have re-released this classic now a total of six times. So I would like to compare the two most popular versions to see which one should be for you, the "Restored" or the "25th Anniversary"

Starting with the "Restored" version, this DVD was authored way back in 1999. However, it was personally restored by Halloween original cinematographer Dean Cundey, trying to preserve as much of the look of it's original theatrical run.Read more ›

This new, Extended version of Halloween is something no fan should be without! 12 minutes of additional footage (4 scenes) has been put into the original version, and the result is awesome. These scenes were not deleted. They were really shot in 1980, when the film was released on cut TV. The scenes were shot using the cast and crew of Halloween II (another must see!) and directed by John Carpenter, himself. These scenes include:

#1 A very well made scene where Dr. Loomis (Doneld Pleasance) has an intense conversation with two sanitarium officials. He begs that they move Myers to a maximum security ward, saying that the boy is dangerous and has an instinctive forsce within him. The officials are unimpressed by what Loomis says, and simply keep Myers in the minimum security ward.

#2 A scene directly following the previous added scene. Loomis walks into young Michael's cell. For about 1 minute he simply stares at the boy, who stares out the window. Loomis then says "You've fooled them, haven't you Michael? But not me!"

#3 This scene is after Myers escape. Loomis walks with a nurse into Michael's room, which is completely trashed. The nurse shows him that the word "Sister" is carved in the door. (If you've seen Halloween II, then you know what this means).

#4 This final additional scene is my personal favorite. In this scene we get a bit more of Jamie Lee Curtis, a bit more of PJ Soles, and a bit more of Nancy Kyes/Loomis. Lynda (Soles) comes over to Laurie's (Curtis) house, and they have some girl chat. Then, Annie (Kyes/Loomis) calls and asks (unsuccesfully) if she can borrow some of Laurie's clothes.

I really love this new version of Halloween. It just feels more complete.Read more ›

Anchor Bay has re-released John Carpenter's 1978 masterpiece "Halloween" about as many times as they have the Evil Dead trilogy. It's been almost impossible to know which one to pick up over the years there are so many versions. Halloween was originally released on DVD by Anchor Bay featuring a bad transfer that didn't do the film any justice at all. They then re-released it again on DVD with a transfer approved by the original director of photography Dean Cundey. The transfer was greatly improved but it was lacking in extras for a film of such great importance. Then they released another cut of the film in which the extra scenes filmed for the TV airings of the film (filmed during the making of the sequel oddly enough) were cut into the film. A 4th DVD release then occured as part of their "divimax" line which was a 2 disc set with plentiful extras and a brand new remastered transfer.

That 4th DVD release proved to be the most problematic. While the quality of detail was greatly improved, somebody made a huge error in that they completely stripped away the blue tint from the film that made it appear that it was set in the fall. It just didn't look how Halloween was meant to look. A backlash ensued and Anchor Bay claimed to have taken those complaints into consideration with Halloween's blu-ray debut.

While the initial blu-ray release did correct some of the color timing errors of the divimax DVD release, it still just didn't look right and it was obvious that they didn't film the movie actually in the fall as the grass was too green and the night time scenes lacked that famous blue tint that gave the film such a great atmosphere.Read more ›

Yes, it was released by Anchor Bay, but not in America. I bought my copy, which has all Halloweens 1-8, in England so it's region 2. And it was pretty expensive and doesn't have alot of in-depth bonus features. It still rocks because not many other people have it.

It's almost inevitable that any film series will suffer from some continuity problems. If, for no other reason, so many different people contribute to the various films, and they each have their own vision and ideas. The Halloween series is actually rather mild in this regard in comparison to... Read More